by | Mar 22, 2022 | All Book Reviews, Nonfiction, Rea's Reviews
Review by Rea Keech In 1974, twenty-five-year-old linguist Margaret, with her husband of six months, went to Iran’s border town of Rezaiyeh to research the Kermanji dialect of Kurdish. There were Kurds in the town, but it was difficult for the young American woman to...
by | Mar 21, 2022 | All Book Reviews, Popular Novels, Rea's Reviews, Tom's Reviews
Review by Tom Keech Grace puts on a fine show of a loving relationship with Jack, her rich attorney husband who prosecutes men who abuse their spouses. In actuality, he’s a brilliant psychopath who devotes all his energy making sure she speaks to no one outside of his...
by | Oct 1, 2019 | All Book Reviews, Rea's Reviews
Women without a Home Review by Rea Keech This collection of 87 poems and stories by 50 different women presents a more unified picture of Iranian women living outside of Iran than one might think. I would suggest jumping right into the selections themselves and saving...
by | Oct 1, 2019 | All Book Reviews, Rea's Reviews
Life in the Orchard Review by Rea Keech Ghaffari cleverly interweaves stories of an extended Iranian family in Naishapur in 1979 as Iran edges towards the Islamic revolution. Gradually, the characters realize a change is coming, but life goes on: their traditions,...
by | Apr 20, 2019 | All Book Reviews, Popular Novels, Rea's Reviews
And the Beats Go On Review by Rea Keech It’s sad, but I picked up the hardback version of this book from a stack of them in the Dollar Store. No need to write a review. There are plenty. I read it for the endless inventive “beats” in the dialogue:...
by | Nov 14, 2018 | All Book Reviews, Nonfiction, Rea's Reviews
The More Things Change, the More They Stay the SameReview by Rea KeechDevine begins Persian Mosaic with a description of leaving Iran in 1973 after living there for two years. When he arrives in Tucson, he receives as letter from his Iranian friend Sarkis asking when...
by | Feb 28, 2018 | All Book Reviews, Rea's Reviews, Reviews of Maryland Writers, Science Fiction/Fantasy
Blending Genres Review by Rea Keech Star Touched is a dystopian novel that takes place after a terrible Cataclysm has destroyed much of the country. It is also a fantasy novel in which some survivors of the Cataclysm have received magical powers. And it is a young...
by | Feb 22, 2018 | All Book Reviews, Nonfiction, Rea's Reviews
Countries Are Like People Review by Rea Keech Trita Parsi, fluent in English and Farsi and acquainted with all the major players in the diplomacy that took three years to produce the Iran nuclear deal, is uniquely qualified to write this account. He has an intimate...
by | Nov 28, 2017 | All Book Reviews, Popular Novels, Rea's Reviews
A Garrulous Sad Sack Review by Rea Keech Maxwell Sim, the garrulous Sad Sack narrator of this 2010 satirical novel, is unable to connect with other people, even those in his own family. The story traces his pitiful, humiliating attempts to do so. One of my favorite...
by | Nov 8, 2017 | All Book Reviews, Popular Novels, Rea's Reviews
Exotic Experiences Review by Rea Keech Lemons’ book is not an autobiography in any traditional sense, but it provides a record of key moments in the interior life of the author. The pieces were written in different places around the world and depicting times ranging...
by | Nov 7, 2017 | All Book Reviews, Popular Novels, Rea's Reviews, Reviews of Maryland Writers
Transfigurations Review by Rea Keech Set in Delhi from the years following Bush’s invasion of Iraq up to the middle of Obama’s first term as president, this novel depicts the philosophical development of Gora, an Indian university student who lives in times of...
by | Oct 17, 2017 | All Book Reviews, Popular Novels, Rea's Reviews, Reviews of Maryland Writers
Life Went On Review by Rea KeechAnybody who, like me, might want to know what it was like to live in South Vietnam in the last few months of the Saigon regime will find this novel riveting. Glenn shows what it was like for the Vietnamese and the remaining Americans...
by | Oct 5, 2017 | All Book Reviews, Rea's Reviews
Choosing the Right Strong Man By Rea Keech Hegland served in the Peace Corps in Iran from 1966 to1968 and returned for visits from 1971 to 1972 and the summers of 1970 and 1976. She returned again to study the agricultural credit system primarily in the village of...
by | Aug 1, 2017 | All Book Reviews, Popular Novels, Rea's Reviews
Shaggy Dog Chronicle Review by Rea Keech If everything in this book is not a chronicle of exactly what actually happened to the writer, then it’s hard to say why it was written. The events, whether recalled or occurring in the present, certainly don’t make an...
by | Aug 1, 2017 | All Book Reviews, Popular Novels, Rea's Reviews
Touring without a Guide Review by Rea Keech This book, published by Kindle Scout, is written in a simple, unpretentious style that is a pleasure to read. It’s in what I like to think of as the I Traveled to a Foreign Land, Saw All the Tourist Sites, and Set My Story...
by | Aug 1, 2017 | All Book Reviews, Popular Novels, Rea's Reviews
A Slapstick Morality Play Review by Rea Keech What I like best about this book is the way it made me laugh out loud so often, sometimes at statements made by Ove and sometimes at the author’s descriptions and comments that mimic how Ove would have expressed it. The...
by | Jul 4, 2017 | All Book Reviews, Popular Novels, Rea's Reviews
What It Takes to Survive Review by Rea Keech In this unconventional novel, the passages in bold print are the love story that the author is attempting to write. His sense of humor is evident from the start as the girl and boy in love are named Sara and Dara after the...
by | Jun 22, 2017 | All Book Reviews, Books with a distinctive voice, Popular Novels, Rea's Reviews
More Droll Than Tragic Review by Rea Keech There are already 2,511 reviews of this novel on Amazon and 3,945 on Goodreads, and so I will just explain why I found it such a pleasure to read. It wasn’t for the plot or action (mostly chick concerns) but for the witty,...
by | Jun 22, 2017 | All Book Reviews, Popular Novels, Rea's Reviews, Reviews of Maryland Writers
Ipatia’s Choice Review by Rea Keech Lipsi’s Daughter gives us a picture of what life in Greece was like at the end of the 20th century for a girl raised in a family with conservative values. Ipatia conforms to the expectations of society without rebellion—except...
by | Jun 18, 2017 | All Book Reviews, Rea's Reviews
Becoming “Human” Review by Rea Keech This is a beautiful memoir that reads like a novel. It begins with the idealistic Mary being sent by the Peace Corps to help people in an Iranian city, where she is immediately made to feel it is she who is lacking in...
by | Jun 13, 2017 | All Book Reviews, Books with a distinctive voice, Popular Novels, Rea's Reviews
A Distanced, Ironic View By Rea Keech Perrotta’s novel has a witty, ironic, detached tone. The author seems to be above it all, looking with amusement at the world around him. Here are some phrases and sentences that typify this attitude. Sometimes it’s a character...
by | Jun 13, 2017 | All Book Reviews, Books with a distinctive voice, Popular Novels, Rea's Reviews
Detached Amusement By Rea Keech This novel is an example of writing with a distinct authorial or main-character voice. Kelman’s first-person narrator, Janet, looks at the world around her with what might be called a detached amusement. This is evident in her...
by | May 11, 2017 | All Book Reviews, Popular Novels, Rea's Reviews
A Montaigne Trapped in His Tower with Nothing to Say Review by Rea Keech Having taken an accustomed seat in my worn leather chair, its polished surface as always conjuring up wistful memories of the familial heritage which was its origin, I set out to indulge myself...
by | May 4, 2017 | All Book Reviews, Popular Novels, Rea's Reviews
Boys’ Weeklies Style? Review by Rea Keech This is an enjoyable story about a young man born and raised in Butte, Montana, whose Egyptian-born father abandoned him and his mother when he was three. He leaves Butte in his twenties and goes to Cairo in search of...
by | May 3, 2017 | All Book Reviews, Popular Novels, Rea's Reviews
The Parenthetical Style Review by Rea Keech In an interview, Perrotta says that structure comes easy to him. He says, “I generally try to write brisk narratives and keep pushing forward all the time, and stop at strategic moments to give a glimpse into a character’s...
by | Mar 22, 2017 | All Book Reviews, Historical Fiction, Rea's Reviews
The More Things Change . . . Review by Rea Keech There couldn’t be a better time than now to read the story of a Syrian immigrant arriving in the United States. Saddo (Sam) Hanna is fleeing not the current ravages of warfare but the tyranny of the Ottoman Empire in...
by | Feb 28, 2017 | All Book Reviews, Popular Novels, Rea's Reviews, Reviews of Maryland Writers
Immersed in Two Cultures Review by Rea Keech The story is set in England and Greece about five years after the Greek war of independence from the Ottoman Empire. Helena’s Greek mother is dead, and she has been raised as a proper English girl by her English father. But...
by | Feb 7, 2017 | All Book Reviews, Historical Fiction, Rea's Reviews, Reviews of Maryland Writers
Clash of Clans Review by Rea Keech Tribal or clan warfare is still a major type of fighting that goes on in the world today. Campbell Ogilvy at the Battle of Arbroath is a historical novel depicting a feudal rivalry between clans in medieval Scotland. By examining the...
by | Jan 31, 2017 | All Book Reviews, Rea's Reviews, Reviews of Maryland Writers, Science Fiction/Fantasy
Longing for a Lost Faith Review by Rea Keech Mud is a dystopian fantasy apparently inspired by stories of descent into the underworld such as in the Orpheus myths and passages of the Iliad, Odyssey, and Aeneid, as well as stories of the fall from heaven as in the Old...
by | Jan 27, 2017 | All Book Reviews, Popular Novels, Rea's Reviews, Reviews of Maryland Writers
Passing Review by Rea Keech The cruelty and absurdity of racism in the American South haunts the lives of characters in Sawyer’s novel, which traces a family from the late 19th century through 1970. Hank, whose family lives on the “back side of town,” feels this...
